


Soot Covered Dreams

by Good_Morning_And_Good_Night



Series: Microtubules: What Brings Things Together [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Coal Mine Worker, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 12:45:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5967844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good_Morning_And_Good_Night/pseuds/Good_Morning_And_Good_Night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the dark and dusty, it is possible for pearls to shine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soot Covered Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or realities (unless otherwise stated). I do not make money off of this.
> 
> These characters are mine, if you wish to use them, tell me first and I'll reply and we'll all be happy.
> 
> This is not betaed. If you see any mistakes, I would love for you to kindly point them out.

David paused to cough in the stifling heat of the mine to watch his fellow workers toil away at the rock around them, searching for rich beds of coal, the stuff which he personally nicknamed black gold - even though he was sure that something more important would soon come along. It was what brought him money, the future didn’t matter to him, and what he personally called the fossilized carbon was his personal ideas. The only way the future mattered were his children and the soot he would always try to keep out of his mouth because his wife didn’t like the taste (not that he did either).

It was grueling work with little reward, and sometimes their picks would shake the ceiling just enough to shake the soot from the crevices and allow it to float onto their noses and hair and face and stain their gritty, black, faces further. David, however, instead of grumbling about it while going home or getting the lunch break always compared it to the pictures of snow in his youngest son’s well worn textbook. 

He knew it wasn’t the same, and he knew he’d never know the difference, but as he toiled in the cramped quarters, he could only think of the jar in the master bedroom slowly filling up with pennies and nickels and dimes. It was slow going, but David was hoping that by the time he died, at least one of his children would have been able to see in person the white crispness of crystallized water.

His lungs were failing slowly, but he knew he had to keep working, get more money, maybe get his wife somewhere safer and with more fortune than here.

David smiled to himself as he worked, trying his hardest to keep it tight-lipped to as to get less soot there as well. But his joy would not be contained, spreading from his very soul into his face and eyes and arms and legs and burst out of his soot clogged pores to clear the coal away and present the shiny pearls of dreams.

His arms fought with renewed vigor as the vision in his mind’s eye faded into the coal, and chunks flew away like a spewing volcano. His body was on autopilot, coal into the cart, push it further, let the pearls be polished and he would get a small piece so that it could form a full one for him. 

He could imagine the true image of the pearl because of his son’s textbook, and he loved it. He loved both the image and the fact that his son was learning and would become an ever greater person than him, rise like the sun to his hard-working moon. And if he had to, he would push him up higher into the midday sky, even if he burned his brittle fingers and burned in the inferno of success greater than a thousand failures.


End file.
